


Five Times Antigone Wasn't Sure What Eric Was Asking Her... And One Time She Knew For Certain

by sachantquiladesailes_98



Series: Misunderstandings in Piffling [1]
Category: Wooden Overcoats (Podcast)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-02 18:44:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21166274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sachantquiladesailes_98/pseuds/sachantquiladesailes_98
Summary: I've wanted to write a 5 +1 fic for a long time, so I figured why not do it for this wonderful podcast that is going into its last season guys!!If you haven't donated, please consider doing so. Don't we all want to see Rudyard ruin Hallowe'en?https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/wooden-overcoats-the-last-season#/





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> I've wanted to write a 5 +1 fic for a long time, so I figured why not do it for this wonderful podcast that is going into its last season guys!!
> 
> If you haven't donated, please consider doing so. Don't we all want to see Rudyard ruin Hallowe'en? 
> 
> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/wooden-overcoats-the-last-season#/

Antigone was carefully beginning the embalming process for Mr. Wentworth- he hadn’t been eaten alive by his cats as Piffling FM had erroneously reported… but he  _ had  _ had a stroke upon hearing the false news and that had done him in- when Chapman came up behind her. He wrapped his impressive arms around her waist and leaned his head down to press his soft, full lips against the side of her neck over her furiously pounding pulse. She shivered against him and she could feel his infuriatingly handsome smirk as he continued pressing kisses against her neck, slowly sliding his hands up from her waist….

Antigone was ripped rudely from her pleasant daydreams by the unmistakable knowledge of another presence in her sanctum sanctorum. Antigone snatched up a trocar and whirled around with it brandished above her head menacingly. “Rudyard, how many times….”

She trailed off upon catching sight of Eric Chapman himself a few steps away, hands raised placatingly and the aforementioned infuriating smirk dancing on his face. “Do you threaten everyone who comes in here with death by trocar or is it only Rudyard? Because I can understand the latter sentiment.”

Antigone narrowed her eyes. “I threaten anyone who feels they can barge into my abode without knocking.” She turned decisively back to Mr. Wentworth, laying the trocar back with her other implements and bemoaning the loss of what was developing into a wonderful fantasy and would probably never be recovered again. The mortuary was her one place where actual interactions with Chapman couldn’t be confused with the interactions that went on in her head and even that had been cruelly ripped from her. Was nowhere safe from bloody Chapman with his deep blue eyes and sure hands and powerful-

“I’m sorry, what??”

Antigone flushed to her roots at the realization that she had been muttering aloud. “Nothing- what? Shut up. Shut up and get out! Christ alive, a woman should be allowed some privacy when she wishes to be alone in her mortuary!!”

“Well, I  _ did _ knock!” Chapman said, rather indignantly.

“No you didn’t. How could you have? When?” Antigone’s fingers were shaking far too much for her to have any business attempting to close Mr. Wentworth’s gaping mouth, but she continued on nonetheless, desperate to have anything to do other than look at Chapman and think about Chapman and daydream about Chapman….

“No! Shut up!” She silenced her rebellious thoughts aloud.

“You didn’t even let me answer!” Chapman’s tone was decidedly indignant now.

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

“Well then, who on earth-”

Antigone slammed down her needle and whirled back around to face him. “Chapman, I am very busy and you are being very rude. So unless-”

“Now, wait just a minute! I have never been rude a day in my life and being accused of it by a Funn is really too much. I  _ did  _ knock and I distinctly heard you say “yes Chapman” which admittedly, seemed like an odd response, but taking into consideration the very little I know about you, not entirely outside of the bounds of possibility, and thus I came down. It’s not my fault if you were- if- I….” He trailed off helplessly, then took a deep breath and soldiered on. “I am responsible for nothing else. I’m sorry if you feel intruded upon, but I did not behave rudely.”

Sometimes Antigone missed the days when they bewildered him too much for him to string together a coherent response.

“Yes. Well. Fine.” She grimaced, missing, of all people, Rudyard, who could always be counted upon to make any situation, awkward or not, about himself.

“Yes. Well. Fine.” Chapman echoed, his indignation fast fading in the face of her non combative response.

Silence settled over the room. Not the usual thick, oppressive, comforting silence that enveloped Antigone like a long lost parent, but a loaded, tense silence that demanded to be broken. 

Antigone couldn’t bear it. “What do you need then, Chapman?!” 

“Oh! Yes. Right. Well, I…” Chapman cleared his throat and wandered away, becoming suddenly interested in one of the embalming machines on the other side of the room. That awful silence again took her mortuary hostage. 

Antigone really was trying to be less of an oddity. Rudyard had always dealt with their status as social pariahs by simply not caring what others thought, but Antigone had never been able to master that. She did care what they all thought of her; in fact, she cared far too much. And so she had hidden away for years and been assumed dead until bloody Chapman had shown up and changed everything. And now she was back out in the world whether she wished to be or not, but still just as odd as ever.

She couldn’t go back to how she used to live BC (Before Chapman, her own private joke that neither Rudyard nor Georgie understood the hilarity of) but she didn’t want to be different either so she really had been trying to be more "normal", for lack of a better word. 

She knew that normal people didn’t yell at their guests when they clearly had something difficult to say and so she waited in that silence, every muscle tightened and every nerve prickled, and determined that she would calmly and gently remind him. “Chapman. You were saying?”

Chapman jolted as if she  _ had _ hollered. “What?”

Antigone’s calm, “normal” smile slid a few inches. “You had been about to say something?”

“Oh, had I? What about?”

“Oh, for- I don’t KNOW! You didn’t get that far! You barged in and then wandered away when I demanded an explanation!!”

“I didn’t  _ barge  _ in-”

“Chapman! I swear, if you do not provide a valid reason for your presence in the next minute, I will throw whatever tool is nearest to me at you, and I  _ will _ aim for your perfectly sculpted face.”

“My what?”

“So you can take your chances that the tool nearest to me is something that won’t cause permanent damage to you or you can get over yourself and tell me why you are here!!”

“Alright! Honestly….” He paused for a moment and Antigone reached her hand behind her towards the nearest tray of implements.

“I’m just collecting myself!” Chapman protested. Antigone’s hand landed on something round and pointy.

“Alright! I don’t know if you have heard but I’m throwing a bit of a shindig on my new yacht this Saturday night.” He paused again. Antigone’s fingers curled around the object.

“AND,” Chapman hurried on, “we’re going to have a rather well known theater troupe performing. The manager owes me a favor for something I did for him… a long time ago…”

Antigone drew back her arm.

“Would you like to go?!” Chapman fairly yelled the question, his voice having jumped an octave and his hands shielding his face.

Antigone froze.

After a brief pause, Chapman peeked his eyes over his raised hands. “An-?” He began, but clearly thought better of it. Stepping towards her, he prised the scalpel from her fingers and laid it on the tray. Then, placing himself between her and the tray, cutting off her access to it, he tried again.

“Antigone? Did you… hear me?”

She had stepped away from him when he had taken the scalpel and was now busying herself with finishing screwing Mr. Wentworth’s mouth shut. She barely glanced in his direction as she held out a hand and said, “Eye cap. Why?” 

There was not even a breath between the two requests so that it took him a minute both to pass her an eye cap and to realize she had even asked a question.

“Well, because I thought you might enjoy it. It’s not Bijou the Clown of course but it should be entertaining and it made me think of you and well, I thought you might… enjoy… it,” he finished rather lamely.

“Ah.” She placed one eye cap and held out her hand expectantly for the other one.

He, feeling (as he often did with her) completely out of his depth, dutifully handed it over.

It wasn’t until she had both eye caps in that she turned to face him again, eyes narrowed and mouth pursed. “What would be expected of me?”

“Well, I… I don’t really know if anything would. You would just be there and hopefully laugh and make polite conversation with-” 

Her nose wrinkled at that, and he must have noticed, because he quickly amended “talk to anyone you wish and completely ignore the rest, and just generally… enjoy yourself.”

She narrowed her eyes again and he sighed. “Look, there’s no catch or whatever you’re worried about. I thought you might enjoy it and I want to go with you. It’s as simple as that.”

But it’s not simple. It’s very much not simple. It would be the second time she had spent time with Eric Chapman without Rudyard or Georgie along… at least, the second time voluntarily. She had misunderstood him the first time and she was determined that should not happen again.

“Just like Bijou?” she clarified one last time.

The tension left Eric’s shoulders as he exhaled in relief. “Yes. Just like Bijou.”

Antigone tried valiantly to ignore the small stab of disappointment. “Alright. Fine. I suppose that can be arranged.”

As if a switch had been flipped, Eric’s entire demeanor returned to normal. “Sounds great! I’ll come for you around 6 then.” He bounded up the stairs, calling down an “enjoy yourself” before the door closed firmly behind him.

And Antigone returned to her embalming, wishing more than ever that she could get lost in a fantasy, and ignore the small voice inside of her that couldn’t help but point out that he hadn’t come to get her when they went to see Bijou.


	2. II

Chapman smells like formaldehyde. This shouldn’t surprise Antigone, he spends nearly as much time as she does embalming people, and Rudyard is always complaining that she smells like her fluids. It does surprise her, though. She’d always imagined that he would smell manly and rugged like the men in her novels and she doesn’t quite know how to process the fact that he does not.

They had been walking back to their respective homes from the harbour and Antigone had barely shivered when- entirely unprompted- he had wrapped his jacket round her shoulders. And he smelled like formaldehyde and it was entirely overwhelming and now she was far too hot, but it wasn’t as if she could just hand his jacket back, right? He was just being his usual charming self and she was overthinking everything as she always did and when, oh when would this bloody night end?! It had been entirely discomfiting. He had been so attentive and kind, and she knew that was the way he was with everyone, but it had still been awful and she needed things to return to normal before she did something to ruin everything and she just _ knew _that’s what would happen if she didn’t get down to the safety of her mortuary- but she couldn’t even do that anymore, because he had defiled it, and now-

“Penny for your thoughts?” Chapman bumped his shoulder against hers and, caught entirely off guard, she stumbled. He wrapped his hand around her arm to keep her upright and her entire body practically exploded. She jerked away from him and caught his jacket which had been about to fall on the ground.

“Sorry! Sorry. I kinda forgot who I was with for a moment.” Chapman joked.

Well, what the hell did that mean? Antigone’s face flared and she marched as fast as she could towards her home. Perhaps her mortuary was defiled, but it was still better than this.

“Whoa Antigone, slow down!” Chapman came jogging up beside her and reached his arm out again, but clearly thought better of it and let it drop back down to his side. “Is everything alright?”

Oh Christ alive, when would this night end?? Antigone just wanted to go home, not play at being normal with Chapman. How dare he ask her if everything was alright? Of course everything was not alright. Nothing was ever alright. The world was a pit of darkness and despair and he was a bright and beautiful light within it and she wanted to be in his light so much it made her want to stab him. 

“I’m fine.”

“Right. Well. Penny for your thoughts?”

They had somehow managed to slow down again, and Antigone wondered if this was what thinking about death and decay felt like for normal people. “You smell like formaldehyde!” she blurted, voice too high and loud.

“Oh. Right. Yeah, sorry. I always forget about that. I’m so used to it that I don’t even notice anymore, you know? Vivienne is always telling me I need to shower more.”

“Shower? Oh…,” she shivered. “No! Shut up! Nothing!”

“Right.” Chapman scarcely paused. “Do you want me to take the jacket back? You just looked cold, is all.”

“No!” Antigone lifted the jacket from where she was still tightly clutching it and slid her arms into it. “I like it.”

“Oh. Well, that’s fine. I thought maybe you wouldn’t… because of your scented embalming fluids I mean.”

“Oh. Yes…”

They continued strolling in silence and this time, Chapman did not attempt to break it. It wasn’t the same awful silence he’d left behind in her mortuary, but nonetheless, she found herself sharing things with him she’d never told anyone before as she always did when left alone with him. It was becoming a real problem.

“My mother smelled like formaldehyde. Even after showers. Rudyard and I would go to see her before bed, and she would give us a cursory kiss on the forehead. Every night. And every morning, she would hug us tightly before we left for school. And then we would smell like her chemicals too. I… I always thought maybe she was imprinting it on us, so we wouldn’t forget when we left home.”

“Forget?”

“Where we belonged. Not that we fit in much to begin with, but the funny smell always ensured we were left alone at school and Guides and just generally in public. When… when I decided to devote myself to the mortuary, I could never quite get rid of the smell and Rudyard said it made him feel as if Mother was coming back for him and so… I devoted myself to finding a different way to smell. That was the real reason. Entirely selfish.”

“Well, almost everything most people do is.”

“Not you. You’re always doing things for other people.”

“Well, yes, but not only for them. I want them to like me. It’s a very lonely way to live, you know. You’re never quite sure if people like you truly or if they like what you do for them, the persona you’ve created to fit in, and so you have to keep upping the ante. It’s part of why I enjoy the time I spend with you so much. You don’t care for those things, and so I know that you’re actually enjoying me,” Chapman chuckled, “for lack of a better way to phrase it.”

Antigone was quiet for a minute. They had reached Funn Funerals, but she couldn’t just leave after that. She needed to say something helpful in response to his confession. “Well, it’s not any less lonely when they don’t like you. Perhaps life itself is just loneliness and the point of existence is to learn how to live with it.” Perfect.

“Right. Well.” Chapman blinked at her, and she thought maybe she hadn’t been as helpful as she had believed. She sighed in frustration and turned to go in. “Well, goodnight Chapman-” At the very least, _ she _ would say goodnight first this time. 

“Wait Antigone-” He laid his hand on her arm again, and this time, Antigone kept her composure rather admirably she thought.

Chapman moved his hand when she turned back towards him and ran it through his hair almost angrily Antigone thought. “I.. I’ve been trying to say something all night. I just… well,” he chuckled a bit, “I suppose I’m scared.”

Antigone stared at him blankly. “What are you scared of? Me?”

“Well, yes, I suppose in a way I am.” Chapman chuckled again and Antigone flared up.

“Well, you needn’t be! If I’m so disagreeable to be around, then...”

“I’m not saying that! I’m saying the opposite, in fact.”

“... you can- what?” Antigone stopped mid rant, sure she hadn’t heard him correctly.

Chapman took a deep breath. “What I’m trying to say Antigone, is that I always ‘enjoy myself,” he chuckled again and Antigone fought the urge to roll her eyes, “when I spend time with you, and I would like to do that more. I realize that may be a terrifying prospect, but whatever works best for you is fine with me- we can figure it out as we go.” He reached for her hands and grasped them in his own, and Antigone stopped breathing.

In fact, she left the natural plane of existence, wishing desperately to never return, but simply spend the rest of her life suspended in this moment. But of course she couldn’t do that, so she forced herself to go back. Chapman was still talking and hadn’t even noticed.

“... friendship is something important to me, something I want to better explore.”

She _ knew _she shouldn’t have come back.

“Antigone?” Chapman briefly met her eyes, before returning his gaze to her hands, still clasped within his own.

“Oh. Yes. I… I feel the same.”

“You do?” Chapman’s head snapped back up and his eyes held hers this time. “Really? That… that’s wonderful! You won’t regret it, I promise!”

Antigone hummed quietly in response. She wasn’t sure what was worse, that Chapman apparently considered her so strange that he had to plead for her friendship or that she had briefly lost her mind and given it to him. Now he was always going to be there, defiling _ everything _ in her meager world. Christ! When _ would _this nightmare end?

She had to get out of there, before she truly humiliated herself. “Yes. Well. I’m very tired. All that laughing really takes it out of me, so…”

“Oh! Of course. I will say goodnight, then. May… um… May I give you a hug goodnight?”

Is this what friendship is? It’s dreadful. “Of course.”

Chapman smiled rather awkwardly and stepped closer to her. Antigone closed her eyes, reciprocated his embrace and thought hard and in detail of the time Rudyard had been sick at Christmas and had thrown up all over the pecan pie. 

As soon as she felt his touch relax, she leapt back and darted for the door. “Well, goodnight Chapman,” she said.

“Eric,” he called.

She stopped just before sealing the door behind her. “What?”

“Please… call me Eric.”

She paused for a moment that felt like an age as he waited for her response. “I’ll think about it,” she finally said and slammed the door practically in his face.

She rested her back against it, trying to calm the rapid pounding of her heart, to sort out the tangled muddle of her thoughts. She could hear him chuckle again- all the man did was laugh- and move away from the door, and she slid to the floor at the fading sound of his footsteps and lay in a heap before it.

“Now look here, we’re closed,” she could hear Rudyard approaching the front, and she mused quietly that Rudyard was the sort of person you always heard long before you saw.

“Hello?” His feet came into view, and she guessed he couldn’t see her as she lay in a black heap in the shadows. She contemplated just staying there until he left, but Madeleine, who had much better sight than Rudyard, ratted her out (Madeleine would have been very upset by such a comparison, if she knew Antigone had made it, even in her head) and Rudyard somehow always managed to understand her.

“Antigone? What the devil are you doing laying there? You’re going to drive off business.”

“What business, Rudyard? We’re closed.” Antigone sighed irritably, and rose from the floor.

“Where have you been anyway?”

“I…,” Antigone panicked internally. “I was at the cinema!”

“You were not!” Rudyard crowed triumphantly. “It is not Thursday. Thursday is when you go to the cinema and it is not Thursday.”

Initially concerned about being caught in a lie, Antigone’s worry faded as Rudyard prattled on. “Haha! Fool me once, shame on you! Fool me twice, shame on you again! Fool me a couple more times, and that is perfectly understandable. But fool me 6 plus times, you will not. Let it not be said that Rudyard Funn…” 

Antigone sighed again, and cut past him to go down to her mortuary. She hesitated, though. “Rudyard?”

“Chapman won’t know what- hmm? Yes? You must be wondering what your role is in all this. Well, I have it worked out. You see-”

Antigone cut off whatever ridiculous plan he was about to enumerate. “Have you ever… had a friend?”

“What? Of course I’ve had a friend! You met him. Jerry… somebody or other. We threw water balloons at Chapman and he was so mad,” Rudyard giggled at the memory. “Best day ever.”

Antigone gave him a look. “Have you ever had a friend who didn’t try to blow up the village?”

“Well…,” Rudyard hesitated, “Madeleine of course.”

“Of course.” Antigone left then. That wasn’t quite what she’d had in mind. 

Upon reaching her mortuary, she was struck by a strong smell of embalming fluid. Not hers, either. Hers had different scents. This was straight embalming fluid.

That was when she realized she was still wearing Chapman’s jacket… which she would have to give back… and which Georgie would certainly notice tomorrow… and which Rudyard would have a fit over.

She groaned and collapsed to the floor again, and this time she was left to wallow in peace.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize Rudyard adds very little to the story, but I love him so much and I loved the idea of having him remember her cinema night and be so proud of himself. :)


	3. III

“I take it back. I love your new friendship with Chapman. People just keep dropping off food for me. It’s like being friends with a celebrity!”

Georgie enthusiastically picked up and tore into her fifth pain aux raisins since they had all walked over to Chapman’s café scarcely 15 minutes ago. “And this French stuff? It’s grand!” She spoke around it, crumbs flying from her mouth. “You know, if Rudyard would just eat some of the food here instead of harassing Chapman, he might stop complaining so much!” She swallowed loudly, and paused in the midst of tearing off another chunk of the pastry. “Where is Rudyard, anyway?”

Where, indeed? The answer came, as it often did, with a great crash and distant screaming. The screaming grew louder, for a moment, as a door near the back of the café was thrown open and Chapman burst out. It faded away again though as he closed it firmly behind him and came stalking over towards where Antigone was perched stiffly on one of the café couches. 

Georgie was sitting adjacent to her in a big armchair with her feet crossed atop the small coffee table and she rose at his stormy approach. “I’ll get him,” she sighed, not needing to explain who exactly it was they were both sure she needed to rescue.

Chapman nodded at Georgie as she passed by before flinging himself down lengthways on the couch, his head pillowed on Antigone’s lap. 

It had been a little over a week since Chapman had asked to be her friend and her life had changed drastically. He invited all of them to his café nearly every night. He was constantly coming over himself to visit her in her now irreversibly desecrated mortuary. He asked her questions _ all _the time and shared details about his own life entirely unprompted. He asked for her opinions too, and genuinely seemed to care what she thought. He invited her to attend various public shindigs nearly every day, but never pressured her to do anything. It was… unlike anything Antigone had ever experienced. It was awful.

By far, the worst part of friendship with Chapman though, was his constant casual physical contact. He would sling his arm around her shoulder when they were sitting together, and would bump her shoulder when he was teasing her. (He liked to tease her; she hadn’t liked it much at first, but she was learning to, if only for the twinkle he got in his gorgeous blue eyes when he did it.) He liked to hold her hand whenever they were walking places and he wanted hugs practically constantly. He’d even kissed her on the cheek before walking her home a couple nights ago. (He also insisted on walking her home, even when it was only across the square and despite the fact that she’d grown up on Piffling and knew it better than he did). 

He would rarely touch her without asking first, of course! But it wasn’t as if she could say no without seeming even weirder than he already thought her. So she simply had to grin and bear it- literally- and recall some disagreeable memory of Rudyard. She was running out of disagreeable Rudyard memories though- which illustrates how frequent the contact was!

“Are you upset by what I’ve said or not paying attention?”

Of course, the problem with this strategy was that it was hard to listen to Chapman and think of disagreeable Rudyard memories at the same time. “Sorry.”

Chapman grinned up at her from his spot on her lap. “Not paying attention, then? That’s probably for the best. I’m afraid I was rather aggressive the first time. I was just wondering if… well, would it be entirely outside of the bounds of our relationship if I asked you to speak to Rudyard about me? I’ve been really trying to be his friend, but he’s not even making the most minimal of efforts. I suppose I don’t necessarily need him to like me, but it would be nice if he would stop attempting to sabotage me every chance he gets. At the very least for his own safety!”

Antigone sighed. “I will speak to him when I get a chance. But I don’t anticipate it will do much good. He’s been determined to “beat””, she raised her hands for the finger quotes and as she lowered them, Chapman caught her right one, laced his fingers through hers, and rested their clasped hands on his chest. She took a deep breath and tried vainly to reclaim her line of thought. 

“He’s determined to beat me…” Chapman prompted.

“Oh! Yes.” Antigone missed her comforting shadows that would have concealed her blush. “He’s been determined to beat you since your arrival and I’m not sure anything I say will make much of a difference…. I will try, though.”

“I appreciate that.” Chapman sighed. “I know that he doesn’t like me, and I’ve even resigned myself to it, foreign as the experience is for me. But, I thought… well, in view of our new dynamic,” he raised their hands up to signify what he meant, “he would make an effort to be, at the very least, civil.”

Antigone made some sort of hopefully coherent, noncommittal response. It was hard to focus with Chapman running his thumb along the proximal phalanx of her thumb. She exhaled a shaky breath and tried to think of whatever scrape Rudyard had gotten himself into this time.

Chapman suddenly released her hand and sat up. She banished the part of her that missed the contact to the deepest recesses of her mind and focused on the relief she felt at being able to think clearly.

Chapman turned to face her on the couch, eyes alight. “What if we hosted a joint funeral? Then Rudyard would have to work with me and we could learn to appreciate our similarities and differences. It would be like when we wrote Des and Nigel’s best man speech together- only about work! The one thing we have in common and the one thing we fight the most about. It’s perfect, don’t you think?”

He’s bounding off to find Rudyard and tell him before Antigone can tell him what she does think, which is that it’s the sort of idea that only works in books and television programs.

She sighed and got up from the ridiculously comfortable couch. She’d better find Rudyard and make sure he didn’t cause any more trouble than he no doubt already had. Besides, she’d agreed to talk to him on Chapman’s behalf, and, while friendship with Chapman was awful, she could sometimes admit to herself that it was also something, if Rudyard should screw it up, she would sorely miss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't noticed by now, this entire thing is just pure self indulgence. I would apologize, but... I love it. Here's hoping some of you do too. I hope to have the rest of it out in the next couple days.


	4. IV

“CHAPMAN!!”

Antigone didn’t even pause in buttering her toast. Buttering one’s toast was serious business, and besides, Rudyard yelling at Eric had been so frequent over the last couple of days that it was hardly important enough to risk her breakfast.

“In case you’re wondering, I’m quitting.” Georgie marched into the kitchen and plopped down at the table.

“Yes, I really don’t blame you.” Antigone muttered in response, concentrating on spreading her butter evenly.

“Gimme that.” Georgie stood up and nudged Antigone out of the way. Antigone protested, but only as a matter of form. Georgie really was  _ great  _ at buttering toast. 

“They both turn into literal children when they work together,” Georgie continued. “I mean, Rudyard is… Rudyard, but he’s like Rudyard times a million when he’s with Chapman and even Chapman, who you’d think could be trusted to take the higher road, starts the most ridiculous competitions with him and taunts him and then has the audacity to act surprised when Rudyard ends up in some sort of ridiculous scrape!” She finished with the toast and pointed accusingly at Antigone with the butter knife. “Remind me why  _ you  _ don’t have to help?”

“I offered! Eric thought it would be better if him and Rudyard learned to work together without me as a mediator. And I know for a fact that he told you the same, and you’re only helping to spite him. May I have my toast please?”

Antigone reached for her freshly buttered toast, but Georgie pulled it back out of her reach. “ _ Who  _ told me that?”

Antigone looked at her blankly. “What?”

“Did  _ Eric  _ tell me that?”

“Oh,” Antigone flushed. “He asked me to call him that.”

“Did he now? Did  _ Eric  _ ask you to call him  _ Eric _ ?”

“Did Eric do what now?” Eric came in behind Georgie and snagged the piece of toast from her hand. “Mmm,” he took a bite, “this is superb, Georgie.”

“It’s mine,” Antigone said, glaring alternately at Georgie and Eric.

“Oh, sorry. There you go.” Eric held out the toast to her and she snatched it with a muttered thanks. “Would you mind terribly making me one? I’m going to need some sort of sustenance before I go back downstairs.”

“You’d better not be messing up my mortuary,” Antigone snapped, getting out a piece of bread and placing it in the toaster.

“I will remind everyone that I wanted to work at my place, but I was informed by  _ all _ three of you that if I thought my equipment was so superior to yours, then I could just keep my pity funeral to myself. Or something along those lines. Believe it or not, one of my concerns was specifically with Rudyard’s proclivity to… make messes.” 

“Wait, what?? What did he do?” Antigone tried to dart past Eric towards the basement, but he caught her shoulders and turned her back towards the toaster. “Believe me, you don’t want to do that. I will fix it,” he spoke over her protests, “but right now, you should both probably stay up here for a bit.”

“I’m quitting, remember.” Georgie piped up as the toast popped.

“Right. Well, either way-”

Whatever Eric had been about to say was cut off by another muffled “CHAPMAN-” which was itself cut off by what sounded like a splash. 

“Christ!” Antigone tried again to turn towards the basement, but Chapman’s hands, still on her shoulders, held her fast. “Don’t. I’ll go. I’ll have to take a rain check on the toast. Enjoy it with my compliments.” He grinned and squeezed her shoulders one last time, before turning around and jogging to where Rudyard was potentially drowning.

Antigone reached for the toast and butter, and turned toward Georgie expectantly. Georgie was perched atop the opposite counter, her eyebrows raised and an amused smirk on her face.

Antigone paused, holding out the butter knife. “What?”

“Nothin’.” Georgie hopped off the counter and took the proffered knife. “Just couldn’t help noticing that you and  _ Eric  _ are getting pretty chummy.”

“Well, we  _ are  _ friends now.”

“Yep.” Georgie said in that awful way that people said things which made you sure they wanted to say more.

“What?!” Antigone asked, exasperated. 

“Nothing.” Georgie finished buttering the second piece of toast and held it out towards Antigone. 

“You can have it. I already have one.”

“Yeah, one that  _ Eric  _ took a bite of.”

“Oh, for the love- Georgie, you know I’m not good at these convoluted social interactions! What are you trying to say?!” Antigone took a bite of her toast angrily.

“All I’m sayin’ is for someone who’s “not good at social interactions”, you seem very comfortable with  _ Eric _ .”

“We spend a lot of time together! As friends do!”

“I don’t know any friends that behave like that.”

Antigone’s heart was pounding so loudly she was sure Georgie could hear it. “What are you saying?”

“Come _on_, Antigone! Sharing toast, calling him Eric, him  _ holding  _ you-”

“He wasn’t-”

“You know, I think of you as my friend.”

“I know, I-”

“You can tell me anything. I won’t tell Rudyard if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I appreciate that, but-"

"And I'm not secretly pining after Eric or something, if _that's _what you're worried about."

"Oh! I... good?"Antigone trailed off questioningly, nibbling at her toast in the resulting silence.

Georgie raised her eyebrows. “And you maintain that there’s nothin’ you want to tell me?”

“I… no! What would there be?”

Georgie sighed. “Alright, I get it. I mean, I wish you felt differently but… I get it. You’ll tell me when you’re ready. I’m gonna head out. I might come back, we’ll see. See ya ‘round Antigone.”

Antigone felt entirely blindsided. What on earth was Georgie talking about? She felt as if she should apologize for something, but she didn’t think she had done anything wrong. Georgie knew how little Antigone cared for subtlety, why wouldn’t she just say what she was thinking? She felt like she had when Georgie had believed her in love with Magdalena, only this time, she couldn’t understand what she had done wrong! It was a terrible feeling, one of the worst Antigone had ever experienced. Normally, when she felt bad, she at least understood why. This… this was awful.

She laid her toast back down on the counter, beside the one she'd offered to Georgie, not feeling very hungry anymore. Suddenly, Eric came bounding into the kitchen. “Is there a mop I could borrow? Everything’s fine! It’s just… is everything alright?” He stopped short when he saw her. Her distress must have been evident.

“I’m fine!” To Antigone’s absolute horror, her voice cracked at the end of the word. 

“Ohh,” Eric’s face softened and he pulled her into a hug. “Is it Rudyard and I? I’m sorry. I don’t mean to cause you distress. He just… gets under my skin. But that’s no excuse. I really am sorry, love.”

Antigone stiffened and yanked away from him. Eric held up his hands placatingly and took a step back. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to, I just got caught up in the moment.”

Of course he didn’t mean it, Antigone internally scolded her stupid heart.

Eric sighed heavily. “Can you just point me in the direction of the mop?”

Now, she felt as if she had hurt  _ him _ ! Somehow, in one fell swoop, she had managed to upset her only two friends in the world, and she didn’t even know what she had done!!

“It’s in that closet” she pointed it out to him. “If you don’t need me, I think I’m going to go back to bed.”

Eric opened his mouth, but seemed to think better of it and closed it again. Instead, he opened the closet, grabbed the mop, and made his way back to the basement without a word.

Antigone groaned aloud. This is why she had never made any friends! Friendship was not something that Funns were good at. She didn’t understand people and didn’t particularly want to spend a bunch of time agonizing over it either.

So she wasn’t going to! If Eric and Georgie had a problem with her, they would need to be far more explicit and if they didn’t do that… well then, she’d spent decades without any friends, she could do it again. Having made up her mind, she stalked out of the kitchen and crawled back into bed, and if she swept the abandoned, meddlesome pieces of toast into the garbage a bit more aggressively than usual, well, that was her business.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This gets more self indulgent every chapter :)
> 
> Leave some love if you're enjoying it


	5. V

Antigone hesitated before the mortuary door. Should she knock? She always berated other people when they didn’t, and yet it was  _ her  _ mortuary. She shouldn’t have to knock on her own mortuary door, there must be a law against that. And yet, she didn’t want to be accused of being a hypocrite if there was someone still down there. And YET, there shouldn’t be, in which case it would be bizarre to knock….

“ANTIGONE?”

The decision was made for her by Rudyard’s approaching presence. She darted inside the mortuary and closed the door as softly as she could, holding her breath until the footsteps and repeated bellowing of her name had receded.

Well, at the very least, Rudyard wasn’t down here anymore. Maybe she’d gotten lucky and they were finished and Eric had gone back to his place to prepare for the funeral.

But as she rounded the corner, she could see Eric bent over the body, engrossed in whatever he was doing. Oh, why her?! She  _ never  _ got lucky. Maybe she could sneak out before he heard her…. 

As she attempted to turn carefully though, her foot slid off the step and she stumbled down the rest of the stairs, catching herself on one of the sinks and slamming her knee into an exposed pipe.

“Antigone? Are you alright?”

Eric had straightened at the clatter and turned to face her. He wasn’t wearing a tie and the first couple buttons of his shirt were undone. As if that wasn’t bad enough- and it was!- his shirt sleeves were also rolled up and she could see his biceps brachii flex when he reached for her. 

Antigone swallowed, her mouth dry. “I… what?”

Eric’s hands settled on her shoulders and he guided her over to sit on the traitorous steps. “Your knee?”

“Oh right.” Now that she remembered it, it really did hurt like hell. “Yes, that is sure to leave a contusion.”

Eric grinned. “At the very least, a bruise, yes.” He crouched down in front of her and extended her leg out to rest on his lap. “I’m just gonna take a look at it, okay? I’m sure it’s fine, but it never hurts to- Antigone? Are you alright?”

Antigone had stopped breathing when Eric’s hands had landed on her ankle. She thought she’d gotten used to him touching her, but she had never anticipated this. She was going to pass out.

“Yes, yes! I’m fine. I just stopped breathing. It’s fine.” Antigone said irritably.

Eric looked at her for a moment in obvious confusion. “Right… well, let’s try to keep breathing… as a general rule.”

“Yes,  _ yes _ , obviously!” Antigone said even more irritably.

“Anyway…,” Eric shook his head a little and slid her skirt up above her knee, “I’m not a licensed professional like Dr. Edgware, but I have a fair amount of knowledge and even some practical experience from… a long time ago….”

If Antigone had been listening, she might have kicked him for that, but during this whole self indulgent speech, his hands had been probing her knee and it was somehow simultaneously distracting and very painful. Either way, all Antigone could focus on was trying to keep breathing evenly and not make any embarrassing noises. 

“This looks bad actually, Antigone. It’s swelling way more than I would have expected. Are you able to walk on it?”

“How am I supposed to know? You made me sit down over here before I could try!”

Eric gave a long suffering sigh. “Yes, well, let’s try and see, hmm?” Then, before Antigone could defend herself in any way, he was tugging her to her feet. “Put your hand on my shoulder and try and take a couple steps.”

“Put my hand on your- how dare you?! You assume I wish to touch your shoulder?! You assume I lie awake and imagine your anterior deltoid and pectoralis major flexing under my palm?! You assume that-”

“For God’s sake, Antigone!!” She’d never heard that almost desperate anger in Eric’s voice before- not even when he’d gotten into that fight with Rudyard at Christmas, not even when they’d accidentally abandoned him with a crazy hermit when they’d gone on vacation. Without a word, she placed her hand on his shoulder and took a step.

It hurt. Like the time Rudyard had whacked her in the shin with a bat, hurt. 

She limped a couple more steps forward, gritting her teeth all the while. “I take it that walking hurts?” Eric guided her back to sit on the stairs.

“Yes.” Antigone said softly, still feeling rather cowed.

“I think you bruised the actual bone. I’ll call Henry to make sure, but you probably shouldn’t walk on it until then. We should get you laying down somewhere with some ice,” Eric continued as he walked over to the far light switch and turned it off, “and I’ll wrap and elevate it for now, and reassess depending on what Henry says.”

“Henry?” Antigone asked, struggling to her feet.

“Dr. Edgware, I mean,” Eric clarified as he turned back towards her. Upon seeing her standing, he came rushing back towards her. “What part of ‘don’t walk on it’ did you not understand?”

“The ‘don’t’ part obviously,” Antigone muttered rebelliously. 

“Pardon?” The polite request was contradicted by the frankly simmering glare Eric aimed at her.

“I’m just wondering how exactly you propose I ‘lay down somewhere’ if I remain on the stairs?” Antigone said innocently.

“I’ll take you.” Eric said simply, lifting her easily from the steps and starting up them. “Can you grab the light at the top of the stairs? My hands are rather full at the moment.”

It had taken Antigone’s brain a moment to catch up, but now that it had, she attempted to scramble out of Eric’s arms. They tightened around her minutely, before Eric stopped halfway up the steps. “What on earth are you trying to do? Kill us both?”

“That would be preferable, yes!” Antigone hissed.

Something that even Antigone recognized as hurt flashed in Eric’s eyes. “Dying would be preferable to me carrying you to your room?” It almost wasn’t a question the way he said it.

“Dying is preferable to most things,” Antigone muttered guiltily.

It was quiet for a moment. Antigone had stopped trying to get down, but Eric had also stopped moving. That same silence from the start of all of this was back, only somehow it was much worse than it had been before. 

Finally, Eric took a deep breath and began marching up the stairs. “Right. Well, I feel like it’s my responsibility to get you situated until Dr. Edgware gets here, so I’m going to do that. Afterwards…” He trailed off, and something unpleasant wriggled its way into Antigone’s chest.

They met nobody on their way from the mortuary to Antigone’s room. (More than that, they heard nobody; Rudyard must have gone out.) 

Eric set her on the bed with her back against the headboard, produced medical tape seemingly out of nowhere, and wrapped her knee. His touch was different from before, more clinical. He wasn’t hurting her, of course, but it was noticeably less gentle this time. Without a word, he dragged her desk chair over and propped her leg on it before turning and leaving the room. 

Antigone grimaced in the resulting silence. After her awkward encounters with Eric and Georgie on Monday, she’d successfully avoided them both since. They were supposed to be done with all the preparations by now, though- the funeral was this evening. She’d thought escaping to her mortuary would be safe. It had been almost a week since she’d been in it and she was starting to itch. 

But of course, Eric was down there doing God knows what, and now she’d apparently bruised her patella and managed to upset him again. This must be why her father had told her not to make friends with the other kids. 

“Here’s some ice.” Eric came marching back in with the ice bag Georgie had bought the second day after Eric had moved in across the square and Rudyard had virtually lost all his meager self preservation skills. “I’ll just leave it resting here,” he said as he set it on her knee. “Dr. Edgware said he’ll get here as soon as he can, but he wasn’t optimistic in terms of that being actually, well… soon. Of course, we’ve all got to get to the funeral now, but I’m sure Georgie or even Rudyard could stay behind if you needed.” During this speech, Eric’s eyes did not meet hers once.

“Oh. No. I’ll be alright.” Antigone said softly.

“Right. Can I get you anything before we go then? I told Dr. Edgware to just let himself in if, by some miracle, he did happen to get here before we were done.”

“May I… I mean, could you get me a book or something? If I’m not allowed to move, then...”

“Oh! Of course. Sorry about that. Does it matter which book?” Eric asked, craning his head round her rather sparse room for some reading material. 

“I only really have one. It’s on my desk.”

“Right.” Eric walked over and picked it up. “The Embalmer’s Almanac… newly expanded… Right.” He looked at in silence for a minute, then seemed to come to a decision. He walked back towards her seated form on the bed and set the book beside her. Before she could reach for it, though, he had sunk on the edge of the bed himself and grasped her hand. “Antigone, I care about you… very much. And I know that I said I was willing to progress at a pace that feels comfortable to you, but I must confess, I didn’t expect it to be so,” he paused, searching for a word, “difficult.” 

Antigone stared at him, once again completely dumbfounded. “I-”

He held up a hand to cut her off. “I don’t want to make you feel intolerably uncomfortable, of course! I’m just wondering if you could risk slight discomfort on my behalf. Even just… well, could I tell people? I’m really rather rubbish at keeping secrets and I did actually kind of let the cat out of the bag with Rudyard. I… I don’t want to have to feel bad about that, Antigone. I just… I’d love to be able to stop actively avoiding the topic in all my conversations,” he chuckled a little.

Antigone could not think of a single thing to say. What on earth was he even asking her?

“Antigone?” Eric let go of her hand to run his through his hair. “Please say something.”

Literally not one single thing.

“It doesn’t even have to be important people!” Eric continued, almost pleadingly. “At the very least, I’d like to tell Vivienne. And Des. And Nigel. And- maybe the better way to do this is to ask if there’s anyone you absolutely don’t want to know?” He looked at her expectantly.

“No?” Antigone said, faintly.

“So…,” Eric took her hand again and looked at her rather imploringly, “I can tell people?”

“About?” Antigone’s voice strengthened a bit as she attempted to gain clarity.

“Us!” Eric said emphatically.

Oh. That’s what he wanted? To tell people they were friends? It must be rather obvious by now, mustn’t it? But still… if it would make him stop looking at her like that….

“Alright.”

Eric’s face split into a grin and it was like the sun coming out from behind the clouds with no warning. The sort of thing that had you torn between fleeing into the cool familiar shadows of home and venturing out to bask in its warmth. 

He leaned forward impulsively and pressed his lips to her forehead. “Thank you,” he whispered against her skin.

She blushed and resisted the urge to run her fingers over where she could still feel his lips like a brand. “Yes, well,” she cleared her throat, “you probably need to go finish preparing for the funeral. I thought you would be done by now.”

Eric stood up, releasing her hand. “Yes, well, a disagreement yesterday has us running a bit behind schedule. But don’t worry, I promised Rudyard that we will get the “body in the coffin in the ground on time”.” He winked at her and she couldn’t help the twitch of a smile in response.

“Holler if you need anything,” Eric said as he ducked out the door. “Enjoy yourself!”

She listened to his receding footsteps bounding down the stairs and mused to herself that friendship was such a weird thing. Was she supposed to have asked  _ him _ before she told Georgie? How was one supposed to discover all this insider knowledge, anyway? She’d have to ask Georgie when she got up the courage to face her again….

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wooden Overcoats s4 and the special are officially funded!!! Thanks so much to everyone who contributed.  
One chapter left in this behemoth.  
Let me know what you think!


	6. + 1

The door to Antigone’s room flew open with entirely unjustified force considering it wasn’t even closed to begin with. “AH HA!” Rudyard said, preening triumphantly in her doorway. “I found you!”

Antigone lowered her ‘Embalmer’s Almanac’ and rolled her eyes. “Your brilliance astounds me Rudyard. You have succeeded in finding me despite the fact that I had cleverly hidden myself in my own room.”

“Chapman told me you were here,” Rudyard continued rather accusingly.

“What genius to ask one of the only two people I speak to other than yourself where I might be.” Antigone continued maliciously.

“He also told me,” Rudyard steadfastly ignored her jibes, “that the nature of your relationship with him- him! Our worst enemy and most horrendous of men to pollute these sacred halls!- has changed.”

“A fact otherwise impossible to gain. Not even by the frequency of-”

Rudyard spoke over Antigone’s dry barb this time. “THAT IN FACT, you have agreed to be his,” Rudyard’s increasingly horrified tone was further clarified by the dry heave which preceded his final, gasped word, “girlfriend.”

“How else… could…” Antigone’s new insult died on her tongue as the import of Rudyard’s dramatic spectacle hit her. “His what?”

“THAT,” Rudyard resumed resolutely, “is what I said. In fact, I was rather certain that he must be mistaken. ‘My sister,’ I declared, ‘would never betray her family and profession in such a grotesque way. She wishes you would do everyone a favor and leave Piffling Vale in peace- as we all do’. He seemed only amused by these assertions, and so I ventured off to find you and confirm their absolute absurdity!”

“Absurdity….” Antigone echoed faintly.

“Imagine my… my....,” Rudyard blustered for a moment, “my utter… I can think of no word which properly conveys the horror, and distress and sheer desire to upchuck that I felt when, upon returning to _ my _ home, I was informed that CHAPMAN,” he spit the name with far more vehemence than usual, “had been given _ your _ permission to officially tell me about your… relationship.” 

“Oh.” Is that what he had been asking her for, then? But why on earth should he? They weren’t in a relationship! Rudyard, as usual, must be mistaken.

“Rudyard…” 

“Yes?”

“Get out.”

“Why I never!” Rudyard began to bluster again. “You have nothing to say? Nothing with which to defend yourself? Nothing with which to defend our family and practice? Nothing-”

“Actually, now you mention it, I do,” Antigone interrupted. “It occurs to me that while you are standing here debating this with me, Chapman is at the most talked about funeral on Piffling since my brilliant if cost ineffective funeral for Mr. Noggins, being assigned by default all the credit for it.”

“I-” Rudyard stopped. “This is not over,” he threatened sullenly before racing from the room with his usual bellow of “CHAPMAN!”.

Antigone sighed in annoyance, before picking up her beloved copy of ‘The Embalmer’s Almanac’ and getting lost in its riveting pages once again.

  
  


She was just getting into the third new section on fluids for the millionth time when her peace was once again shattered. 

“Oy!” Georgie came tearing in and practically tore the book out of her hands.

“Hey!” Antigone protested.

“Don’t ‘hey’ me!” Georgie said. “I’ve a bone to pick with you, Antigone Funn! You can have this back when you explain to me why the bloody, stupid mayor was told before me.”

“What?!” Antigone was beyond irritated. What in Christ’s name was the matter with everyone today?

“I tried to be patient, tried to be a good friend, and let you tell me in your own time. Even after you blatantly lied to my face, I held my peace. But the fact that I have to hear about your relationship from the mayor- the same man who needs to be reminded what time to get to work every stupid, bloody day- is an insult that I can’t take. I told you I think of you as my friend and you told the _ mayor _ before me?! The _ mayor?! _ The man who needs to be coached through every conversation- that’s the man you trusted before me?! I mean, God, even as an employee, I should know before the mayor! THE _ MAYOR!! _The man who-” 

Whether Georgie had no more examples of the mayor’s helplessness, recalled that speaking in such a way was like to get her fired, or was simply too overcome to continue, Antigone did not know, but she suddenly broke off abruptly and glared accusingly at Antigone. “Well?!” She had grown more and more hysterical during her tirade and Antigone tried to edge away from her, remembering all too clearly the incident with STIFFD.

Nevertheless, she could not ignore the similarity of Rudyard and Georgie’s complaints.

“My relationship,” she prompted, trying to keep the rising panic out of her voice.

“With Chapman!” Georgie finished.

“Right,” the sinking feeling in Antigone’s chest worsened. “As his?”

“Girlfriend!”

Antigone did not say anything for what felt like hours. Finally, she managed to squeak out. “Is Eric- Chapman- here right now?”

Georgie broke off the tirade she had launched into anew in Antigone’s silence. “What? Yeah, I think so. Him and Rudyard were going to tidy up downstairs. Lord knows how that’s going,” she muttered.

Antigone was keeping her composure admirably well given the circumstances. “Can you send him to see me please?”

Perhaps it was her uncharacteristic politeness or maybe she wasn’t keeping her composure as well as she thought, but Georgie didn’t even attempt to argue with her. “Yeah sure. Gimme a minute.” She tossed the almanac onto the bed beside Antigone’s covered leg and jogged off.

At her departure, Antigone’s tenuous grasp on her self-control snapped. She buried her face in her hands and began hyperventilating. Why was Eric telling people she was his girlfriend? Was it possible she had misunderstood him? How could she have? Did he truly want her to be his girlfriend? Did _ she _ want that? What did this mean for her relationships with Rudyard and Georgie? What did it mean for her role as the competition? Was this why he kept asking to hug and kiss her on the cheek? Did he want to kiss her on the mouth? Would she survive that? Did he want to kiss her… other places? Did he want to make love to her?? She most certainly would not survive _ that _! Christ alive, even fantasizing about it had made her heart feel as if it might pound out of her chest. The real thing would probably be much worse. 

“Antigone? What’s the matter?” Eric, who must have arrived during her meltdown, rushed to her side at the sight of it. 

“What’s the matter?!” Antigone flung her head back up and glared at him, causing him to jump back a couple paces, his hands raised placatingly. “How dare you ask me what the matter is? You and your… your…,” she floundered, hardly able to think let alone articulate her thoughts. “Why are you telling people I’m your girlfriend??”

Antigone’s outburst was far louder than she meant for it to be, made infinitely worse by the fact that Eric did not immediately respond to it. Instead, he stared at her, his face expressionless, as the echo of her hysteria bounced around the room.

As it finally faded, Eric sighed and sat down on the far end of the bed from her. “I was afraid this would happen. I confess that I rather deliberately took action promptly since I did expect you to change your mind. Perhaps that was unfair of me. I apologize. But Antigone, I meant what I said before. I’m finding our current relationship dynamic more-”

Antigone interrupted him fiercely. “What current relationship dynamic?”

Eric paused. “Ours?” He said hesitatingly.

“Yes, yes!” Antigone snapped irritatedly. “But what exactly do you consider our relationship to be?”

Eric was decidedly bewildered now, in a way he hadn’t been since before the night of the drama troupe. “Are you… asking me to define our relationship?”

“I’m asking,” the hysteria was back in full force, “what I am to you?!”

“Well, you’re my girlfriend.” Eric said slowly, as if _ she _was the crazy one.

“Oh.”

Antigone reflected that her inability to flee this conversation placed her at a real disadvantage. She willed Rudyard to make a large mess downstairs that would demand Chapman’s attention. Even if he burned down the house, she’d buy him a Sherbet Dip Dab for saving her from this awful discussion.

“Antigone?” Eric was inching slowly towards her, his hand outstretched as if she was a wild horse. It was exactly the patronizing gesture she needed to snap into action. “Why on earth do you think that?!” She snatched her hand away from his grasp and crossed her arms, leveling a glare at him.

“Why?” Eric was getting irritated now, a fact which delighted Antigone. Irritation was a common reaction to her and one she could deal with. Besides, it placed them on an equal footing, because she was pretty bloody irritated herself!

“Yes, why?!” Her voice rose with each inquiry.

“Because you said that you were!!” Eric pulled his own hands away and ran them through his hair, his tell that he didn’t understand what was going on and that it upset him. Antigone hated that she knew that.

“Well, I suppose that’s not entirely true," he continued. "You said that you ‘felt the same’, which I took to mean that you were okay with me considering you as such! What on earth did you think I was asking you about before I left for the funeral??”

“I didn’t know! I thought you wanted to tell people that we were friends!”

“Who does that??”

“I don’t _ know!” _Antigone stressed. “If anybody would, it would be you.”

“And you thought,” Eric’s bewilderment was noticeably increasing, “that my behaviour towards you was friendly… in… nature?”

“I. Don’t. _Kno__w!! _ I don’t _know_ how friendship works, I was taking my cues from you!” Antigone was feeling more and more miserable by the second. She was beginning to think this whole mess was her fault and the fact that she apparently couldn’t tell friendship from alleged affection was frankly quite humiliating.

“But I don’t treat anyone else like that? I just can’t understand-”

Antigone exploded. “NO of course you can’t! You’re bloody Chapman, a perfect specimen of humankind! Christ, everyone wants to be your friend and nearly everyone wants a lot more than that from you! Everything is so clear to you. The only thing that manages to confuse you is how you ever ended up in this embarrassing situation with poor, pathetic, friendless Antigone, Piffling Vale’s resident oddity!”

“I-” Eric started, but Antigone had heard quite enough from him.

“So I’ll make it easy for you: you can just tell everyone it was a joke and I’ll spend the rest of my life in the mortuary and we’ll never have to see each other again!” Antigone was dismayed by the suddenly prick of tears in her eyes, though what exactly she was crying about wasn’t clear. She willed them to stay there and, in the absence of being able to flee to her safe and sacred mortuary as she desperately wished she could, slid down into the bed, drew the covers over her head, and lay there, listening for Eric’s departing footsteps.

They didn’t come. Instead she felt his hand on her knee through the covers. “I’m sorry, Antigone. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Damn this bloody man! She wishes she’d never spoken to him, never set eyes on his beautiful face and glorious musculature. She wishes he had not convinced her to leave her mortuary and abandon her outdoor suit, wishes she’d just died in those begonias. Most of all, she wishes he had never _ noticed _ her. His appreciation of her chocolates, her work as a mortician, her embalming fluids- it was all of this that had truly doomed Antigone. Damn this bloody, bloody man!

Eric shook her knee lightly. “Antigone? Please come out of there. I promise we can have a civil conversation about this.”

“No,” Antigone’s reply was muffled but sure. “I need to stay here in my shadows. The shadows-”

“Protect you, yes.” Eric chuckled softly. “Alright. I can make this work.” He paused for a moment. “Can I ask what exactly you thought the night on my yacht was?”

“Why are you even still here?” Antigone said, rather petulantly. “I’ve given you an excuse-”

“I-!” Eric started animatedly, before clearly pulling himself back under control. “Don’t want that. I would like us to sort this out. What exactly did you think the night I took you to see that theater troupe was?”

“I wasn’t sure! That was why I clarified with you. I asked you if it was like when we went to see Bijou, an outing you made quite clear was only with the goal of gaining my services.”

Eric protested at that, but Antigone ignored him. “I deliberately clarified your intentions! I asked you if it was like Bijou and you said yes!”

Eric’s protests died in his throat and she could hear him pull himself together again. “Fair enough. I understand the confusion, and that was probably my fault. I had made a plan that relied on you attending with me, and I was rather afraid you would not agree. I was attempting to convey that it would be enjoyable to you- just like Bijou. I can understand how my intentions may have been misinterpreted though.”

Antigone flung the covers off her head and pushed herself back into a seating position. She leaned forward and swatted Eric’s hand which still rested on her knee. “Stop talking to me as if I am a distraught, unstable client!”

“I’m trying to be respectful!” Eric protested.

“Well, stop it. I don’t like it.”

Eric groaned. “When I speak honestly, you get upset. When I speak respectfully, you get upset. You are the most frustrating person I have ever met.”

“Yet you want me to be your girlfriend?” The question felt somehow both accusatory and vulnerable at the same time and any other response from Eric might have shut down the conversation permanently.

But his simple, quiet, sure, “I do” made Antigone feel like she could finally draw in a full breath of air. “I see…. Did you ask me that night, then? When we were walking home?” 

“To be my girlfriend? I did, yes. And um… you thought I was asking for your friendship?”

He asks the question carefully, without a hint of either malice or amusement, but Antigone is still horrendously embarrassed about the whole thing, so she jumps to defend herself. “Admittedly, I wasn’t paying the best attention to you, but I distinctly heard you say that my friendship was important to you and that is a confusing thing to say when asking someone to be _ more _ than a friend!”

“Fair enough.” Eric smiled absentmindedly, his eyes thoughtful. “I don’t even remember saying that to you…. I mean,” he hurried to clarify, “I believe you! I just don’t remember it.”

“You said, my friendship was important to you, that it was something you wanted to better explore.” Antigone parroted back the words she had repeated again and again in her mind over the last couple weeks.

Eric said nothing for a minute and Antigone forced herself to actually look at him. His face was buried in his hands and he was shaking. Antigone was just about to call for help since he must be having a seizure, when she heard a distinct sound of mirth emanate from his concealed mouth.

She stiffened. The one thing that Antigone had never been able to bear was being laughed at. It was one of the reasons why being a clown had appealed so much to her. When you were a clown, people were laughing at you because you _ wanted _them to, instead of because you were proving yet again how abnormal you were, how little you fit in, how little you would ever fit in.

She pulled back her left, uninjured leg and rammed it as hard as she could into Eric’s side. His laugh morphed into a pained gasp followed by the hard thud of him falling onto the ground, and Antigone allowed herself a pleased smirk behind the almanac she had picked up and begun perusing again. 

“Jesus, Antigone… I’m going to have one hell of a bruise.” There’s still a little laugh in Eric’s voice, even if it is a bit pained, and when his hand pushes down the almanac in front of her face, she actually hisses at him. 

He’s clearly a bit startled at that, but after a brief pause, he just rolls his eyes and pries the book out of her hands. She lets him, albeit sullenly.

“I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at… life I suppose. ‘I wasn’t paying the best of attention to you’ seems like a bit of an understatement to me. I asked you out, and then, the longer you stood there not saying anything, I’m afraid I began to babble a bit, listing various reasons why I thought we should try this and trying to alleviate concerns I thought you might have. One of these being that a friendship that had become important to me, a friendship I wanted to better explore was my fledgling one with… Rudyard.”

It’s quiet for a moment. Antigone’s eyes snap open and search Eric’s face. His face is always so easy to read, something Antigone is sure is deliberately cultivated. His left eyebrow is raised infinitesimally and a smile is still tugging at the corners of his mouth, but there isn’t a hint of teasing to it. He seems to be genuinely happy. She gives him a tentative grimace in response.

At the sight, his mouth splits open in a wide grin, and she is struck yet again by how stupidly attractive he is. “What a story this will be to tell one day, huh?”

“What do you mean?”

The smile vanishes, and Antigone inwardly curses her uncanny ability to ruin every good moment. “Ah. Yes. Good point. Perhaps not. I…” Eric trails off, suddenly engrossed in her almanac that he is still holding.

“Yes…” Antigone says, more to fill the silence than for any concrete conversational reason. 

“So you didn’t actually mean to become my girlfriend then?” Eric finally ventures.

“No. I misunderstood you.” 

“Yes… I understand you perfectly.” He takes a deep breath, and begins speaking again, in his usual jolly tone- too loud for her quiet room. “Well! I will let you get back to your reading, then!” He shoves the book back into her hands rather aggressively. Dr. Edgware will see to your knee and um… yes. Well… enjoy yourself!”

Antigone didn’t understand what was happening. Did he think she didn’t want to be his girlfriend now? _ Did _ she want to be his girlfriend now? The thought of it is literally paralyzing. What would that look like? She wouldn’t be a good girlfriend, she just knew it. She’d be a much worse girlfriend than she was a friend, and she was an _ awful _ friend. But… could she lose what they already had? Getting closer with Eric was awful but going back to not being close with Eric was equally awful. She just didn’t want anything to change. She didn’t like change.

Yet....

She thinks of packing the outdoor suit in the attic. She thinks of her failed date with Rudyard’s odious friend. She thinks of solving crimes, confronting Mayor Desmond, and telling both Eric and Rudyard off for their awful therapy ventures. She thinks of standing up to Rudyard and becoming his partner. She thinks of the brilliant if cost ineffective funeral of Mr. Noggins and her beautiful chocolates- chocolates that Eric still raved over quite frequently. She thinks of going to see both a circus and a drama troupe with Eric. She thinks of Octavia Blimp and Isabella McGouin and Nana Crusoe. She thinks of Bijou. “You’re the most important person on this planet.” She promised to remember.

“Wait!” Her voice comes out strangled and her hands are shaking so that she cannot keep her grip on her book, but she’s doing it. She is the most important person and nobody else will do it for her.

Eric paused, almost out the door, and half turned back towards her, his eyebrows raised inquisitively. 

“I… I was wondering if… if...” Antigone’s courage is fading quickly. She needs a little bit of help. “... if you could ask me out again.”

It cannot be denied- not even by Rudyard- that Eric Chapman is nothing if not helpful. 

He smiles softly, taking a few hesitant steps back towards her. “Ah. Well, yes, I imagine I could do that. I think I could even do it better this time.”

He sinks back down beside her and takes her hand. “Antigone Funn. Will you be my girlfriend?” 

She hesitates. “Let me just clarify-”

Eric groans. “I don’t know how to be clearer than _ that _!”

Antigone glares at him rather balefully. “I said that _ I _need to clarify.”

She pauses, expecting an interruption, but he holds his peace, stroking his thumb over her hand, gesturing with the other for her to go on.

“I’m not… going to be good at this,” she starts, hands glued to his thumb as it glides across her proximal phalanx. “I’m rather uncomfortable with real physical contact, I don’t like spending lots of time around huge groups of people, I… I’m weird. It’s not just quirks that will fade with time. I don’t… know how to fit in here. Nobody likes me. That’s why I stayed in the mortuary. I think that I can do this, I think that I should do this, I think I even want to, but…,” her voice has gotten quieter and more sullen throughout, and she’s muttering by her final words, “I’m not going to be good at it.”

Eric doesn’t say anything to that, so finally Antigone looks up. “So?”

“So… what? Are you done clarifying? I mean, I could tell you that more people like you than you realize or I could tell you that I know you better than you think and am rather enamoured with each new piece of you I discover or that what you call weird, I call refreshing and unique and wonderful. But… I’m still waiting for an answer. It’s rather rude to not answer a nervous man’s question, you know.”

“Are you _ sure _you’re still asking?” 

“I am.”

“Then… fine. I guess. Yes.”

“Right. Great. That’s um… that’s really great.” Eric squeezes her hand and goes to get up again. “I really should let you rest.” He hesitates, though. “May I… um… give you a hug?”

And Antigone understands him this time. “You may kiss me… if you want to.”

“I very much want to,” Eric breathes before leaning in.

Antigone had been right. The real thing was much, _ much _worse. In the best possible way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all she wrote folks! Thanks again to everyone who left kudos on this work and the one comment I got which made my whole week. :)
> 
> I got the idea a while back that Antigone was totally the type of person that could be dating someone and not even know it, and then it absolutely would not leave me alone. When they announced that Wooden Overcoats was coming back for its fourth and final season, I knew that I had to write it. I know it got a bit sappy at the end, but I just have SO many feelings about Antigone and they cannot be contained. I love her so much, guys, and I just want good things for her and that kinda spilled into this last chapter. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed this final installment and I know we'll all enjoy the final season of the podcast.
> 
> Leave me a comment if you have any more fic ideas for me for Wooden Overcoats. I'd love to write them. 
> 
> Thank you all again for your support. I'm very grateful. I hope you all always "enjoy yourselves" and never ever forget that you really are the most important person on this planet.


End file.
